With Shield and Body
by Mythopoeia
Summary: "She cannot remember any more how it felt to think her sons were alive." A series exploring the final days of the House of Durin. Warnings: Battle of Five Armies, Canonical Character death. Now complete.
1. I: Fíli

I: Copper

He thinks his brother is dead.

He thinks his brother is dead, but he shuts his eyes so he doesn't have to see it, so that he doesn't have to _know_. Hot tears force their way through his lashes anyway, burning their way down his face to his mouth where they taste like blood, scalding and foul. He lies with the left side of his face pressed against the ground, and when he draws in a choking breath he can feel the grit coating his teeth and tongue. The dirt tastes like blood too, laced with a soft, sour tang of copper ore that his tongue even now can feel and recognize, a shrill song that reverberates through his body, pressed close as it is upon the body of the earth. There is another ore there too, he knows, running deeper and older, something mellow and rich and cold, but this metal-song he doesn't understand, doesn't recognize. Gold, then, or perhaps mithril, pure untapped veins of it pumping life through the ancient stone far, far below.

His eyes itch with the salt of his weeping and he tells himself he is not crying because his brother is dead. He is crying because this is his home and the land of his people and he cannot even understand what these stones sing to him, what dark stories they tell. These ancestral songs are so different from the blunt voices of iron and the sour whine of copper-dust that he knew in the stale tunnels of Ered Luin. He feels even in this moment—especially in this moment—that this is somehow a shame upon him. His first night in Erebor he spent wandering the broken halls like a lost creature, awed and confused and upset, until his brother grew suspicious and came in search of him and together they climbed to one of the high balconies still open to the night air. They had stayed there until dawn, silent and shivering in the cold but each comfortable in the other's quiet. He had gazed into the darkness of the mountain and tried to imagine it lit with a thousand lamps like his King had described it when he was a child, and as the sky paled to a dusty, dry grey behind them his brother had at last fallen asleep, his head dropping softly to rest upon his shoulder like a—like a dead weight.

He did not see his brother fall, but there had been a sound behind him while he fought like a mad thing in defense of his fallen King. Through his fury he had heard it and he had never heard anyone make a sound like that before, not anyone, but he couldn't look and he couldn't stop because his King, his uncle and his King, lay bloodied upon the ground. And so he notched his swords and lost his helm (_sister-son_, his King had said at its gifting, hoarse with pride before all the Company), and in his last desperation he had given his own body up as a shield against the spears of flint and bronze and bone and now he can't stop crying no matter how it hurts, and he thinks his brother is _dead_. His brother, so beautiful and so young, who only that morning had stood fierce and straight and steady at the side of his King arrayed, for the first time in his life, as a prince.

He thinks his brother must be dead, because there had been that _sound_ behind him and suddenly his left side had been undefended, filled with goblin yelling and goblin spears. He had stumbled back to stand nearly over his King and he had not shouted for his brother, he had not looked among the dead lying broken at his feet, he had not even allowed himself to think it. He does not remember the last time he saw his brother in the confusion and the slaughter. Instead he remembers the look that had been in his eyes the instant before they leapt out of the fastness of the Mountain together roaring and resplendent in jewels and mail, and how cold his fingers had been in the grey morning when they clasped hands and made a brave jest of their last farewells.

He does remember standing alone over the body of his King and cutting down goblins uncounted until his arms shook with the strain. He remembers his sword shivering to pieces in his hand. He remembers when his shield was struck out of his failing grip. He remembers screaming. At the end, like a child, he had reached out with his hands and tried to grasp the blades before they drove into his body, to push them away like he had pushed his mother's hands away when he was small, in the evenings when he did not want to sleep.

One of his hands is cut open to the bone, his thumb nearly severed and hanging. The other is a tangled ruin of flesh pinned to his ribcage where the spear went through.

He tries to think it was worth something. But his King lies now defenseless and his brother is dead and he is crying because it _hurts_, oh Mahal, oh god of the Forge and the Quiet beneath the earth, it hurts and if he hurts then his brother must have—it must have—for it was all around them spears, spears all around and there was that _sound_ and if he is hurting now then his brother—

If his brother is dead then he must have hurt like this, and if he is dead then he died alone, and he'll never know the last thing his brother's eyes ever saw but he does know that it wasn't him, that it wasn't his face, that it wasn't anything loving or kind or fair.

He can feel the world fading around him, and his thoughts are growing ever more confused, and he thinks his brother is dead. But he wants so badly for the last thing he sees to be not the spear-hafts jutting from between his ribs, or the black blood and the bright blood co-mingled on the stones, or the teeming sky roiling with bats. He is selfish and he doesn't know how to be alone, and he wants to see his brother's face, even if—

Even if his brother is dead.

(He won't believe his brother is dead.)

(His brother is dead.)

(His _brother._)

He will not leave his King even now, even after giving him everything (because _sister-son_, he had murmured in the treasure-halls of Erebor, and _my heir_, he had said to the Master at Laketown, and _good lad_, he had smiled in the narrow darkness of Ered Luin, fondly ruffling his hair). But he drags in another breath that whistles through his torn throat and tastes like red copper, and with the last of his strength he claws his free hand into the dust and with a sob of effort he lifts his head. He opens his eyes.

The pain when he moves is an agony that rips him apart. He screams, once. It is his brother's name.

And the last thing he hears is the metal beneath the earth singing a dirge he cannot understand, and the last thing he sees is the frozen look of terror on Kíli's white and bloodied face, and somewhere there is a bear roaring and a great shadow that blocks out the sun but it is too late, too late, too late.


	2. II: Kíli

_AN: Thank you to everyone who reviewed and added this story to their favorites! This is now a series, and will continue for at least one more installment. It will probably also continue to be depressing. As a disclaimer, I do not own any rights to The Hobbit or anything Tolkien, though they own me._

* * *

II: Silver

The night before the battle, he dreams.

He wakes with the grey air of morning sharp as knives in his throat, and as he sits up gasping he can feel the dream running out of him like cold water running through his hair. It is gone before he can even think to try to catch it, so he just sits awhile, his heart throbbing against his collarbone. Dimly he realizes that he is shaking.

And then he hears the stone-singing and he looks up to see that his brother is kneeling there, watching him, one hand awkwardly half-raised as though he had been going to wake him. His brother's face is dove-grey and haggard in the darkness of the lampless Hall, and the smudges beneath his eyes are like blue thumbprints, dark and painful.

"Kíli?" He says, uncertainly.

He stares back, swallowing down the sour sleep-taste on his tongue, and yes, there had been dreams, but at least that meant he had slept. He looks at his brother's drawn, bruised face and knows Fíli was up all the night again, wandering the ways of the Mountain and listening to the voices in the walls and in the earth. Thinking about what it means to be a King.

"It's all right," he croaks, and clears his throat. He shoves back the blankets and instantly the cold is biting at his bones, setting all the hairs on his legs standing straight as wire.

He says: "I only dreamed a little."

It is not really an explanation at all, but his brother does look a little reassured, and his hand drops back down to his jacket as he fishes for his pipe.

"Oh?" Fíli prompts, pulling it out and clamping it between his teeth as he forages for the pipe-weed in his other pocket. "What about?"

The trembling has stopped, but his heart is still pounding away, slam, slam, slam. Trapped, trapped, trapped.

"Mother was there," is all he says. It is all he can remember, and Fíli does not ask for details, so they just sit together in silence as the rest of the Company slowly stirs awake around them. A single trumpet sounds somewhere outside the Mountain, dull and muted through the stone walls, and then falls silent again. He crawls out of his bedroll and reaches for his boots, and somewhere an answering trumpet sounds, and Fíli strikes a light that flares like heated gold in his eyes, and carefully lights his pipe.

* * *

Later, they hear the sound of the charge, and the goblin-voices garbling through the stone, their laughter like the sliding of stone and their shrieking like steel snapping. The sound of it sets Thorin raging. He does not even rally them, does not even make any grand speeches like those he once loved to give, the ones Kíli used to imitate with pompous glee in the privacy of their bedchamber, strutting about and waving his fist in the air until his brother laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Now Thorin roars _To arms, my people!_—and it is enough, even little Ori sent scurrying for his mail and round soup-bowl of a helmet. The grey-beards busy themselves about the wall in preparation of casting it down, and even from where he stands Kíli can hear his uncle's snarling as he urges them on: _curses upon the goblin-filth_, and _Mahal smite the wizard and his rat_, and _I've fought too hard and suffered too much, Mahal, Mahal, Frerin, Dis, they shall not take the Mountain, my Mountain, mine._

Kíli pulls his swordbelt tighter at his waist and knots it again, and his boots scuff a little against the mirror-smooth floor.

The silver mail he wears glitters even in the dimness of the Mountain, bright silver studded with chips of beryl and emerald and some dark blue stone he does not have a name for, rippling like falling water as he moves. It is not much heavier than his old leathers had been, and as he runs one finger idly along the intricate blue scrollwork inlaid into his silver vambraces he wonders anew how the ancient craftsman who shaped this armor had fashioned it. The work is unlike anything he has learned in his mother's forge, the metal beaten thread-thin and woven like cloth, lying soft but bitterly cold against his skin.

(_I suppose Thorin will teach us the making of it_, he had said to his brother the previous night, after the arms-giving was done and the Company had scattered each to his own blankets, leaving the fire to burn itself out. _After this is all over, and we can rebuild the old forges._

_The learning will not be easy_, Fíli had replied doubtfully. And he had laughed in reply: _I know it! Of course it will be hard, but look, look how beautiful it is_.)

"I was looking for you," says a voice, and he turns around to see Fíli approaching with a large, angular sheet of metal hooked over each arm, and he too is already clad in the war-gear Thorin had presented him with the night before. And the earth sings at his approach as it always does, glad and deep and secret, and as ever the only word Kíli can recognize is _Durin_.

(He pretends he understands as well as Fíli does, so that his brother will never know.)

(The stones never sing for Kíli.)

Fíli is dangerous and bright and covered in gold, his chain mail meshed together with a thousand upon a thousand tiny steel rings painted with gold, his breast and shoulders and arms sheathed in golden plate metal inlaid with ruby and brass and raw amber beads that shift along interlocking strings of copper wire so that every move he makes is like a sun setting, or rising. He is resplendant—he is terrible—he is like nothing Kíli has ever seen before. He thinks: _Is that what I look like now?_ And he does not know if the thought of it makes him mortified or glad.

Fíli looks startled by whatever expression is on Kíli's face, but then he looks back down at himself, embarrassed and flustered and horribly proud.

"I know," he says. "It will take some getting used to, I expect. Wait until you see Thorin. He's all gold and mithril, it hurts to look at him.

"Dwalin found some shields still unbroken," his brother continues, holding one of the two he holds out to him. Compared to the King-gifted armor it is a dull, blunt, ugly thing, unadorned save only for a simple etching of the sign of Durin on its face, but it is strong. Unpainted and unadorned, he supposes that it must have been left unfinished in one of the upper-level forge-rooms and had thus been spared the dragon's ruining fire. Torchlight running over the cold metal sets the star and anvil ablaze for a flash and then dies, and he wonders who this shield had been meant for, so very many years ago. Perhaps it was to be Thorin's.

"Take it, Kíli. Dwalin will have my head if you do not."

He takes it wordlessly, fitting his left arm into the straps and hefting it experimentally. It is lighter than he had anticipated, but cumbersome. He takes a few dancing steps to the side and back again, testing the unfamiliar balance. His brother is watching, but his expression is unfathomable and, suddenly embarrassed, Kíli stops.

"I know you have not trained much with the shield, but there will be spears out there, and arrows," Fíli says at last, and he wonders if it is meant as an apology. "Just hold it high enough and don't let it drop. You'll be all right."

He nods. His brother is very pale, and his fingers twitch as though in pain. For a moment they just stand there, staring at one another, and then Thorin's voice rings out from the wall—_Kíli, Fíli, to me!_—and Kíli cannot help but flinch, and Fíli's hands jerk suddenly upward to Kíli's shoulders. His brother is not looking at him, but his hands are shaking.

"Don't," Fíli whispers in a fierce, low rush, smoothing out the dark wolf-fur settled in a ruff at Kíli's throat as intently as though he thinks of nothing else. "Don't do anything stupid and get yourself killed. You stay close, do you understand me? You stay beside the King."

His throat is dry. There is a forge-smell in the air of heated copper and dark iron and cold steel.

"I know," he retorts at last. "What, do you think I have learned nothing in all this mad adventure? I know where my duty lies."

"Kíli."

He bats his brother's fussing fingers away.

"Fíli, enough. Stop your mothering before Dori thinks you're mocking him."

Fíli looks first wounded, and then embarrassed, and then the corner of his mouth twitches ever so slightly and that was what Kíli had been waiting for. He grins and offers his brother his hand. After a moment Fíli pulls off his glove to take it, his grip relaxed but firm. It is a warrior's clasp and Kíli knows that his brother understands what that means.

"Mahal guards his own," Kíli says.

"The hammer falls but once," Fíli replies solemnly, but there is that light in his eyes again as they say to each other for the first time the guarding words that they have heard in a thousand stories, that Thorin had once said to Frerin and then to Dwalin, when Frerin was no more. _The hammer falls but once, but if Mahal wills it, let my kinsman live._ And they smile at each other across the linking of their hands.

"It will be all right," he says, and his heart is thrashing against his ribs. "Gandalf's out there, remember? He's not happy with Thorin now, but neither does he want him dead. Things will work out."

The others are already gathered in a knot by the barricade, and he can glimpse Thorin at their head, the dark curve of his helmet flashing like a beacon as light through a chink in the wall catches against its side. Thorin raises one mailed hand and Bofur nods, reaching to brace himself against one of the supports as Dwalin thrusts the lever into position, and Kíli knows that in a minute the wall will be gone. There is no more time. There will be no more time, until the battle is over.

"Kíli," Fíli says again, but that is all he says, for he too must know the time for farewells is over. He grips Kíli's hand as though he means to never let go.

And what kind of farewell could there be, anyway, between brothers? What parting that could possibly say enough, and mean enough, when outside the Mountain the sky is white with dust and boiling with bats and filled with the wailing of the dying?

Only this: that Kíli eases his fingers from his brother's warm grasp and goes steadily to stand beside his King, and it is the bravest thing he has ever done, in all his life. All the Company cheers at his coming, and hails him as their prince, and Thorin's hand on his shoulder is heavy with confidence and his smile is fey but so proud.

And this: that Fíli's face is white in the gloom but he stands steadily as a King, and when Kíli draws his hand away, Fíli lets him go.


	3. III: Dís

_AN: And with this chapter I am calling "With Shield and Body" complete. This does not, however, mark the end of my Hobbit stories; I had originally intended there to be a chapter from Thorin's pov preceding this one, but after writing and rewriting and reworking it for many days now I have decided that this piece works better without it. It will be reworked into its own story. In addition, there will be more line of Durin fics coming your way (I'd love to try my hand at an Ered Luin-era story!), and Bilbo fics as well because I love Mr. Baggins so much. Thank you everyone for the favorites, reviews, and follows, I appreciate it all more than I can say. _

* * *

_Of the twelve companions of Thorin, ten remained. Fíli and Kíli had fallen defending him with shield and body, for he was their mother's elder brother._

_-The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, by J.R.R. Tolkien_

III: Stone

He stands with his arms folded and his feet planted wide apart, solid as stone as he watches her. His beard is as thick as an animal pelt and smells like honey and woodsmoke, and his eyes glitter from beneath his brows like polished black stones. Dís is not afraid of him, but still when she meets that black gaze with her own she quails. She knows what those eyes have seen.

"I am told that it was you who bore my brother from the field," she says. She stands as straight as she can, staring down this monstrous man whose kneecap she barely reaches with the top of her head. When Balin had told her of the deed she had scoffed in disbelief at the thought, too numb to accept it, but seeing the man now she knows Thorin could have fit in just one of those massive arms, could have been cradled like an infant. Even imagining it is absurd. It hurts, because her brother was so proud.

The giant inclines his head slightly, gruff and implacable.

"It was I. Your brother fought like a King, lady."

"He _was_ a King," she retorts. It is unjust of her to take offense, for she knows he was only attempting a show of respect for her brother—and that in itself is remarkable, if what Balin told her of the man is at all true—but she cannot help herself. His eyes narrow slightly, but aside from that his expression does not change. He is being patient with her, Mahal help her, he is actually trying to be kind.

The flare of injured anger goes cold in her breast and there are suddenly tears in her eyes.

She says: "You have my thanks, Beorn Carrockcarver," and after only the most meager bow she flees, clamping her teeth down hard over what she had truly wanted to say—to scream.

_It was you who left my sons on the field to die._

They might have been dead already. She knows that.

But they might also have been saved.

She will never know.

* * *

Dís cannot remember any more how it felt to think her sons were alive; she tries to remember all the long, uncomfortable journey to Erebor but every memory she has is colored and changed now with their deaths. She packed light to travel and so all their belongings were by necessity left behind in their boyhood home: all the toys from their childhood, and their pens and their books, and the broken-soled boots Fíli swore for years he would repair but never did, and Kíli's spare fiddle-strings coiled in their tin beneath his bed. She is beginning to feel as though they were never alive at all, as though she dreamed them in the dark days of her exile, like she used to dream up playmates to entertain her loneliness when she was a girl.

Dáin had set guards at the gate to watch for her coming across the Desolation, so when she arrived at last at Erebor she found the lamps lit and a feast of welcome spread: wine sent from Thranduil's stores in Mirkwood, goat meat from the herds now thriving on the lower slopes of the Lonely Mountain, root vegetables baked in honey, and coarse dark bread. It was not a banquet like those in the days of her grandfather's reign but it is the richest food she can remember eating, and there was enough for everyone. She sat at the high table beside Dáin, and if he noticed that her beard was still shorn and that no ornament adorned her hair, he said nothing. At the end of the meal the entire hall stood and raised their glasses in a toast to her, crying _Hail, Daughter of Thráin, Sister of Thorin, King Under the Mountain!_ She recognized Dáin's apology in that title, and the honor he did her fallen brother. But the wine was a dark red bright as blood in the cups, and in the silence as the hall drank she could hear for the first time the sweet, singing voice of the gold in the walls, slow and secret and potent.

The sound of it made her ill.

* * *

It is Balin who finds her after her flight from Beorn, old, kind, diplomatic Balin. She is in what once was Thorin's bedchamber, sitting on the very edge of the bed, bowed over her clasped hands, her whole body rigid with grief. Balin stands a brief moment in the open doorway and then enters, closing the door carefully behind himself before walking to stand in front of her, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Beorn has departed for his home," he says at last. "He wished me to tell you so. He is not offended, Dís," he adds before she can open her mouth. "He understands. Sometimes he seems more beast than man, it is true, and I do not think he bears much fondness towards Dwarves, no matter how he has helped us. But he understands."

She nods, and swallows. She feels as though she is suffocating.

"How can I bear it, Balin?" She asks at last, her voice thin with anguish. Her knuckles are white and she wears no rings. "I wanted only to speak with him, to thank him, but then I saw him and all I could think was—was—"

"Beorn does not know," Balin says gently. "Nor do I. If any one saw their deaths it was Thorin, and he too is—dead." His voice falters a little. "I know Bolg's guard carried spears, but that is all I know."

"Spears," she repeats hollowly, and she unclenches her right hand slowly, finger by finger, until it lies open in her lap, cradled upwards and open, like an empty cup waiting to be filled. When her babies were first born she could sit there, her hand just like that, and fit each little head entire in her palm.

"You are Thráin's daughter." Balin sits beside her, spreading out the skirts of his robes before settling down on the old, flat mattress. A cloud of dust rises up and then falls again, slowly.

"You are strong. You will survive this, lass."

"Yes," she says, and the bones of the Dwarves are the bones of the earth, their hearts the earth's heart, and they do not break.

(But.)

Her children are gone, and her brother is dead, and all were buried with honor before she even had news of their deaths, locked away in stone with a bright Elven sword laid over the tomb. She does not know what wounds were upon her children's bodies, or what garments they were buried in, or who wove the final plaits into their hair.

(Or how they died.)

She hopes they did not suffer.

She hopes they thought of her.

She hopes they did not have time to think of her.

"My sons," she whispers, and her face is wet. She does not know when she began crying but now that she has realized it she cannot stop. "My brave boys."

"They fell defending Thorin with both shield and body," Balin says heavily, and in some far distant part of herself she recognizes that he has grieved nearly as much as she has, these past weeks.

"They did so well by him, Dís," the old dwarf halts out, and there are tears in his eyes, on his face, running into his beard. "And Thorin was so proud. They knew it, before the end."

She tries to say that it is good, that she is glad, that she knows that Thorin deeming them worthy of their blood was all her boys ever wanted since childhood, but all the sound she can make is a moan, low and desolate and animal. She buries her face in her hands, keening her grief, and Balin watches her helplessly. Briefly, he sets his hand upon her shoulder as if she was not his Queen, but only a child again in an unfriendly world, a little girl struggling to understand why Frerin will never return from Azanulbizar.

Then, he leaves her.

She composes herself once he has gone and just sits there, on her brother's empty bed, staring blankly at the wall, at nothing.

* * *

That night she sleeps in her childhood room, old dolls still piled in a box at the foot of the bed, the scrawled runes of her name still legible where she cut them into the wall when she was young. She traces the letters with her eyes as she tries to fall asleep but it does not help her. When she closes her eyes the images that have plagued her all this long year are still there as vivid as painted pictures in the darkness behind her lids: Her brother falling, her sons leaping to his defense and then—what? Kíli, vomiting up blood, his eyes round with terror as Fíli tries to hold him up, stroking his hair back with trembling fingers. Fíli, falling forwards over her brother's body with his riven shield still strapped to his broken arm. Kíli, struggling weakly as the goblin standing over him raises a knife to slit his throat. Fíli, curling forward over with the spearhaft protruding from his stomach as Kíli screams, and screams, and screams.

The bear-man slew Bolg thrice-accursed and all his guard, and scattered their bodies in pieces across the field. There is nothing left for her to do, no one against whom to avenge herself. And so it is the same every night since first the messenger came to her door in Ered Luin, and it will be the same, she knows, every night of her life: Dís lies in the darkness and watches her children die, and it is never the same death twice, and she will never know which is the truth.


End file.
